Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Reviews
A charming, polished, and warmly humorous detective game whose cute 3D dioramas and delightful graphical touches are a pleasure to interact with.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami delivers on its philosophy too well. It’s an easygoing detective game, sure, but its design feels similarly laid-back. It doesn’t feel like it reaches to excel very often. It doesn’t excite, it doesn’t provoke thought, and it doesn’t linger on the tongue. And there’s something to be said about a game like that. Not everything needs to be a revelation. Sometimes, you just need something that you can file away after you quack the case.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a great addition to the Happy Broccoli Games roster as well as to the detective mystery game genre. While it does play it safe in its approach, the game brings out the lovable aspects of the genre with its authentic characters and unique investigation. The voice acting and music are engaging and tonally-accurate, while the game doesn’t fall victim to stereotypes and carves itself a place in the sand within the cozy mystery beach. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a must-play for those who crave a story-rich experience without the dirty work of digging too deep into the issue at hand (or feet?).
While Duck Detective: The Secret Salami has an incredible voice cast, colorful characters, and an intriguing plot, I was let down by the puzzles and gameplay. There were a few puzzles that I solved on my own with no issue, but many puzzles had clues that left me in the dark instead of guiding me.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a short but very sweet adventure that works your brain and warms your soul.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami sets out to be a quick, breezy mystery and at this it excels. It's full of fascinating characters with interesting relationships, set in a world brimming with detail to inform your investigation and when at its best makes you truly feel like a detective on the case. While I feel it's fill-in-the-blanks system could be a smidge more helpful, that's a small blemish on an otherwise excellent little mystery title that's well worth settling in with one afternoon with a cup o' joe and a sleuthing mind.
Duck Detective - The Secret Salami is a charming, albeit somewhat flawed experience that ends far sooner than it begins.
The world is so interesting and the gameplay engaging enough that I wanted the game to be longer, which is a rarity these days. I’m hoping that McQuacklin will take more cases in the future and will have the opportunity to enjoy many more bread slices. Play Duck Detective: The Secret Salami in two or three sessions, enjoy the humor, and try to solve the mystery without resorting to hints.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a charming adventure, with a good art style and some fun but occasionally wily puzzling. It may be very brief, but it's also quite lowly priced.
This duck-flavoured detective mystery may be short, but it's a great deal of fun. Wonderfully animated and excellently written, figuring out the case of Duck Detective: The Secret Salami might only take a couple of hours, but it's a jolly good way to spend an evening.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a delightful, wonderful little game. My life is better for the joy that it has injected into it and there’s not a thing about it that I think the developers could have done better.
It's about 2-3 hours of gameplay, and while I'm glad this particular case wasn't dragged out longer, I got to the end and just wanted more. Another case, more time with these characters, anything. That said, while I wish we had more Duck Detective, I'm happy that I got to spend time Duck Detecting as it is, and really hope I can get more adventures of Eugene McQuacklin someday.
Both the jokes and puns as well as most of the puzzles can be enjoyed by people of almost all ages. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami offers a short narrative that doesn’t overstay its welcome and is for the most part very engaging for two to three hours. The English voicecast is fantastic but with the text only being available in English as well it’s unfortunately not accessible all around the world.
Review in German | Read full review
Duck Detective is short enough to feel a bit lacking, and some of its mystery-solving gameplay could be polished into a more satisfactory experience. However, it's cute and charming, and it has a dedicated quack button. For a bite-sized experience playing as a duck detective, it provides an entertaining couple of hours.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a charming experience that adds an endearing (and fowl-themed) twist to the world of detective work. I loved the way that the game embraced the tropes that you’d typically associate with noir detective stories in its own silly little ways, whilst the tale brought with it some cool ideas that escalate MUCH further than just a stolen lunch by the end. The investigative elements of the gameplay are well-implemented too, with them embracing a simpler approach but one that’s easy to find yourself fully invested in. And come on… ‘deducktions’… it’s perfect. It’s just a really, really fun experience from start to end, with both the storytelling and detective work engaging throughout. Here’s hoping that this won’t be Eugene McQuackling’s last case, because honestly, it was a delight to be a part of.
I’m happy to report that the game is as cute as it looks and has plenty of charm, adorable characters, and animal puns.
In sum, the duck game is a charming, fun adventure that mixes humor, mystery and accessible gameplay. However, despite a fairly balanced difficulty curve, some players may feel limited due to the necessity of understanding English to solve some puzzles, which may be a weak point for some [people].
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a short adventure that immerses the player in an entertaining investigation, full of twists and turns. The full dubbing adds enormously to the fun. While I'd have liked more, I hope the developers will take advantage of this experience to offer a similar, slightly longer game in the near future. I particularly recommend the game to fans of narrative adventure and puzzles who are looking for a small, low-cost experience.
Review in French | Read full review
I enjoyed my time with Duck Detective: The Secret Salami a lot more than I was initially expecting. It proved to be a more engaging experience than what I first thought from the trailer. Sure, some of the gameplay and interrogation elements could have been fleshed out more, but at its core, it’s a game that has more intricacies than it lets on at first.